(Editor's note: In 1979, Zooperstars! columnist Alicia Armstrong wrote a two-part column on Rameses, the male lion that was approaching its 10th year at the Milwaukee County Zoo — and had just turned 10 himself, middle age for the lord of the jungle. This column, which first ran onJan. 11andJan. 18, 1979,has been condensed for space.)

The trouble with being a lion is that life shoots by faster than a mouse at a cat show.

It seems like one minute you're munching on your first zebra and the next minute your eyes start to dim, your hearing fades and your muscles begin to sag like a beer drinker's belly.

Obviously, it's very depressing to start crumbling like that when you're only 10 years old — the same age as kids in grade school. And when, on top of everything else, you've got a lifetime job of being king of beasts, it's especially embarrassing to have to begin that long, tough climb over the hill with all your subjects watching.

Rameses knows these discouraging facts of life. He's not complaining, but he knows. He knows because he's a lion and he's 10 years old, and, as the old saying goes, he's no spring chicken anymore.

Rameses arrived in Milwaukee on May 28, 1969. The lion, who had been raised by the wife of a park ranger in Africa, was lonesome when he arrived here. He weighed some 150 pounds, but still he was only about a year old, and he needed friends — friends like the kindly woman who had taken him in after he'd lost his mother.

So, during his first days in Milwaukee, he cried a lot — as other newcomers to the city also are said to do. But soon, the young lion accepted the zoo men as his new friends. He calmed down. He stopped crying. He was happy.

But he was even happier after he met Suzie, a tempestuous lion lass with dangerous golden eyes. After a brief but intense courtship, the two decided to become one, and a year to the day after Rameses arrived in Milwaukee, he became a father for the first time.

He was an extremely young father — only about 2 years old, in fact. Now, you wouldn't expect your average 2-year-old to know much about parenting, but Rameses turned out to be one of the world's greatest fathers. His three youngsters — two sons and a daughter — were crazy about him.

He was not much more of a cub himself. Mother Suzie, on the other hand, was older, and although she may not have been any wiser, she was a stern, no-nonsense type who gave the impression of being very mature and sophisticated. In other words, she wasn't any fun at all, so the cubs preferred to hang around with their almost-infant father.

Rameses came from a part of the world where some fellows can have more than one wife without being accused of intemperance, immorality or hoarding. So he acquired a second spouse, a sleek and powerful damsel named Lucy, and he soon had as many cubs as Wrigley Field — a total of 25.

Zoo officials decided that enough was really too much. For the world — which always needs more love, sweet love — did not need more lions.

(The 25 cubs did not stay here, by the way. They were sent on to lion safari parks and to some other zoos. If they had stayed here and reproduced as skillfully as their father had done, we would have had to set aside a very large area — Elm Grove, perhaps — as a lion preserve.)

To prevent the arrival of more lion cubs at the zoo, Rameses and his two mates were separated in September 1974. But Rameses was lonesome again. He missed the lionesses' friendship as much as he missed their love, but his isolation ended in September 1975, when Suzie and Lucy went on birth control drugs.

Later, Suzie died, and now Rameses is alone with Lucy. They are living a quiet life, like any other middle-aged Milwaukee couple that is content to stay home and wonder how the kids are getting along — wherever they are.

Postscript: Lucy the lion died on March 31, 1986, after suffering from cancer and pneumonia complicated by pleurisy. She was 15. Rameses was destroyed at the zoo on Oct. 30, 1986; he was 18 — "very old for a lion," Armstrong wrote in his obituary — and had been very sick and not responding to medical treatment.

ABOUT THIS FEATURE

Each Thursday, the Green Sheet brings back some of the stories and features that gave the old Green Sheet its distinct identity, including Alicia Armstrong's "Zooperstars" column about the denizens — animal or otherwise — at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Look for them in print and online at jsonline.com/greensheet.